AURORA —Backers say a proposed affordable housing apartment complex next to the High Line Trail Canal off Chambers Road and East Alameda Avenue would help fill a gap in the city’s housing market and also create partnerships with a local community farm to promote healthy lifestyles for future residents.
Gardner Capital, an economic opportunity and community revitalization development company based in Missouri, bought 3.7 acres earlier this year just south of the historic DeLaney Farms site and directly behind the Alameda-Chambers Connection shopping center with the goal to develop it into a four-story, 116-unit apartment complex, tentatively called Alameda View Apartments.
“The development will meet one of the highest priority needs … for more affordable rental units and workforce housing,” said Signy Mikita, community development planner with Aurora’s Community Development Division. “Most of the 116 units will be affordable to households earning 60 percent of the area median income, as well as 12 units that will be affordable to households with lower incomes” — 30 percent and 50 percent of the median income.
She said Alameda View also will provide two and three-bedroom units for families with children, which Aurora identifies as the most needed type of unit in the city right now.
“We saw a need for workforce housing through our discussions with the city, and we thought this area right along the canal, with nearby access to retail, a future RTD stop within a half mile and its proximity to the DeLaney Farm was ideal,” said Scott Puffer, Gardner Capital’s senior vice president of the Midwest region.
The location is within walking distance of DeLaney Community Farm — which is .
Puffer said the apartment complex will include a resource center where educators from the farm can come over for cooking classes, agricultural seminars and healthy eating classes.
Gardner Capital “came out to the farm a number of times to really try to understand what we were doing and to see how it could possibly serve future residents from that development,” said Heather DeLong, director of DeLaney Community Farm for Denver Urban Gardens. “We love having classes on the farm … but certain classes, like cooking demonstrations and things, we don’t exactly have the resources to do on the farm because of our limited electricity and lack of a kitchen.”
She said one of the goals of the farm this year is to expand its mission of sustainable agriculture and food access.
“If we’re able to do that there and get local residents excited about what we’re doing at the farm while bringing more folks in and getting more people interested in participating in DeLaney, then that’s incredible,” she said.
Gardner has applied for affordable housing tax credits from the state; awards will be announced next month.
Mikita said if Alameda View is awarded those credits, the city will finalize approval of up to $700,000 in federal HOME funding to help construct the project, likely beginning early 2017.
“Like most major cities, Aurora has faced a shortage of affordable housing as home prices have boomed,” Mikita said. “The city is actively working to involve more developers in more projects like this that will enable people to live where they work, and take advantage of the great access to transit that will be coming with the opening of RTD’s light-rail line through Aurora this year.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or @Mmitchelldp
